


Exile

by conceptofpeaches



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Bruce Springsteen References, Child Abuse, Depictions of Dissociation, Graphic Depictions of Abuse, Graphic Violence, Homeless Youth, Homelessness, Homophobia, Passive Suicidal Ideation, Physical Abuse, Religious Content, Religious Guilt, Suicidal Ideation, references to neurodivergency
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-15 02:00:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29056314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/conceptofpeaches/pseuds/conceptofpeaches
Summary: Based on my own headcanons, this is the exile of Eliot Waugh's oldest brother.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 14





	Exile

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warning for physical abuse and biphobia/homophobia as well as references to passive suicidality, dissociation, and anxiety. (You know; childhood things.)
> 
> None of this is canon, I just have a lot of thoughts about Eliot Waugh and his brothers.

Abraham Waugh wasn’t a troublemaker. Maybe by his father’s standards but as far as Abe was concerned, Joseph could get kicked by a horse and Abe wouldn’t bat a damn eye. He’d love to see it actually--pay to see it even. Yep, he would save up his allowance just to see his father get wrecked by the strongest stallion in Whiteland. He’d pay extra for a mare.

Some days those thoughts were dangerous to have.

This particular Sunday being one of those days. Abe could see the look his father shot him after morning services, and his heart plummeted into the pit of his stomach. He was flirting with a girl from school--they had economics together--and he noticed how from across the church’s basement, Joseph suddenly got very serious while conversing with one of the town gossips. The smile was wiped from Abe’s face when his father looked up and his glare met his son’s usually bright eyes.

Unfortunately, Abraham had an inkling what this was about--or what it was gonna be about. Like always:  _ his big fucking mouth. _

Abe  _ wasn’t _ a troublemaker. His father and a handful of his teachers would tell you otherwise, but what did they know? He was seventeen and had enough energy to power the entire farm almost every day. He had decent if not good grades, went to church with his family like he was supposed to, he was a gentleman in what few relationships he had, and he loved his family--well, he loved his mom, Heather, and his brothers.

Ben was his younger brother. Two years younger, so not by much. If anything, he was a bigger troublemaker than Abe, which was pretty admirable considering how quiet the guy was. He had the best grades out of any of them. Abe wouldn’t be surprised if Ben became a member of Mensa within the next five years.

Nate was next in line. He was--well--he was more Joseph’s kid than Heather’s. Abe didn’t like talking bad about kids but his little brother was a real shit sometimes. Nate was the kind of brother that would piss in your Coke bottle if you weren’t watching him. Abe really hoped that behavior didn’t continue into college.

Eliot was the youngest of the Waugh boys. He was Nate’s twin so he wasn’t younger by much. He was eleven, and Abe knew that Eli looked up to him. It didn’t necessarily scare Abe, but he did know that some of his own behavior could get Eliot in trouble if he got any ideas.

After everyone had piled into the family car, the ride home was tense and uncomfortable. Abe stared out the window, jaw set and mouth in a tight line. He knew there was no way to keep from getting hit by the train barreling at him. And it was gonna be a bitch of a crash. Ben kept glancing at Abe from the other window seat. Between them were their little brothers--which was very illegal, but Abe doubted Joseph cared.

Eliot was clinging to Abe’s arm, he could tell something was wrong. Frankly, he was scared because his big brother was scared. Nate wasn’t being loud either, Joseph had scolded him as soon as he made a noise when they pulled out of the parking lot of the church. There was a forty-five minute silence that filled the cab of the truck and filled Eliot’s stomach with dread. The kind of dread that twisted his guts and made his throat close up.

He felt Abe squeeze his knee a little and he glanced up at his brother. Eliot was always jealous of him because Abe looked like their mom while he looked more like their father. They both had Heather’s curls--Eliot’s were dark and Abe’s were blond. They both had her freckles, a smattering of light spots over the bridge of their noses and the high points of their cheeks. Eliot’s were lighter than Abe’s and they would obviously fade before he graduated college.

Abe was smiling at him though. Eliot’s eyebrows scrunched together anxiously because he knew the difference between his brother’s happy smile and his nervous smile. He didn’t like the way Abe’s smile was making it hard to breathe. They weren’t speaking--they knew not to when Joseph was angry like this--but Eliot knew what Abe wanted to say.

_ Hey, it’s gonna be okay, Eli. _

It’s what he usually said to Eliot before his school performances or his math tests. It’s what he said to Eliot the Thursday before, when Abe picked him up from school and took him to see  _ Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets _ when the theater in Indianapolis was playing it again. Eliot stood beside Abe’s truck in his cheap, homemade costume and cried because he knew it didn’t look right. (It was made up of a black gown Abe had kept from when he was in choir as a kid, as well as a stick Eliot had found out in the treeline beside the farmhouse.) His brother knelt in front of him to scribble a lightning bolt on his forehead in their mom’s lip liner and said, “Hey, Eli, it’s gonna be okay. You’re gonna be the coolest wizard in there. No one else has this robe at Hogwarts. You’re cool, dude.” It somehow calmed Eliot down then, but now it only made him more anxious.

The farmhouse grew closer, gravel crunching angrily under the truck wheels. It made Eliot want to throw up the closer they drove. He hated this feeling. And he had it every time he got home whether it was on the school bus or in Abe’s truck. And when Joseph pulled into the large rock driveway, it didn’t stop.

When Joseph got out of the driver’s seat and slammed the door behind him, no one moved for a moment. Not even their mom. She looked like a prisoner who knew what punishment was coming--the punishment wasn’t hers though. By the time anyone seemed to decide to move, Joseph was opening Abe’s door. Eliot felt his brother being yanked out of his seat beside him.

“Get out of the damn car--” Joseph had his hands fisted in the collar of Abe’s button down. He used his son’s surprise advantageously and pushed the boy to the ground. Heather started to say something, but Joseph spat over his shoulder for her to stay put.

Eliot perched on the edge of the backseat, nails digging into the upholstery of the seat where Abe was just sitting. He stared in shock at his brother on the ground, groaning as he regained his breath. The sharp edges of the driveway gravel dug into Abe’s back. He didn’t dare move. He knew not to until Joseph told him to.

“You tryna make a fool outta me, boy?” his father spat, turning back to face him with his hands still tangled in the cotton of the collar of Abe’s shirt.

“The hell are you talkin’ ‘bout?” Abe furrowed his brows. Eliot knew his brother was a good liar, enough that he couldn’t tell when he was lying or not.

Joseph hoisted the teenager up, who had a few inches on him. It never mattered how much taller than Joseph Waugh his sons were, he could throw them if he wanted to. The man dragged Abe up to sit on his bottom, so they were close enough that he could scream at him effectively. “I’m talkin’ about the fact that the town’s been sayin’ how my son’s a  _ goddamn fuckin’ fairy! _ ”

Eliot saw the whites of Abraham’s dark eyes. What was their dad talking about? Abe had only ever had girlfriends, Eliot had thought. He couldn’t have been queer--but his eyes were giving away that it wasn’t the entire truth. Eliot glanced behind him at Nate and Ben. Nate was about to start climbing over Eliot just to see what was going on, but Ben was staring in the opposite direction and picking at his cuticles. Had he known? Next, he looked at his mom. She was watching her husband in horror, her eyes big and shocked blue.

“Dad, I--”

Eliot always hated the sound of skin on skin, especially when it was really hard hitting like punching. Abe was bleeding now, red blooming from his cheek. Joseph never turned his rings inward before hitting Abe--or Ben, in the rare instances that he did.

“ _ Shut your damn mouth _ .” Joseph yelled, shaking Abe. “Why did Denise McGrath feel the need to tell me that you’re a fuckin’ homo? Is it true? You been goin’ ‘round town taking it up the ass like a fucking faggot?”

Abe only stared at him in shame.

He shook his son again, “Answer me, damnit!”

Eliot wanted to cover his ears and cry. He didn’t want to hear any of this, but knew he had to. He watched Abe close his eyes and swallow thickly. He took a deep breath and averted his eyes from his father like an animal submitting to another.

He licked his lips, “I have.”

There was a pause and Eliot could hear the blood rushing in his ears.

Abe finished: “I had to get it from someone, though.”

Eliot could see Joseph’s ears turn bright red from where he was in the truck. His arms were numb, and he felt like what he was watching wasn’t actually happening. Like, maybe he was watching TV. Maybe Eliot would get shaken back to reality by his mama so she can tuck him safely into his bed.

That’s never how this worked though.

Nathan was crying now because Abe was sobbing. Joseph had pushed him down and stood up to kick him in the guts. Heather was yelling at her husband to stop, but she didn’t get out of the car until Joseph was back on his son and winding up to punch him again. He only got one strike in before his wife was tugging on his shirt to get off of Abe.

It worked for the most part. Joseph stood up to scream at her next. “I told you to stay in the fucking car--”

“ _ Stop! _ ”

Everything froze for a second and Eliot couldn’t figure out who had yelled until the three of them were staring at him. Eliot couldn’t breathe, he was working hard to make himself breathe.

Joseph turned around fully to face the truck and Heather flinched.

“Joseph,  _ don’t _ .”

_ Don’t hurt them. Don’t bring them into this. Don’t make this about them. _

Eliot’s father took a deep breath and cleared his throat. His eyebrows were making a line in his forehead as he put his hands on his hips and he turned his head to the side and spat into the grass.

Without looking up, he lifted his hand to make a  _ come hither _ movement, “Eliot. Nathan. C’mere.”

When neither of them moved, Joseph started toward the vehicle which got their asses in gear. Eliot scrambled down and helped Nate get out of the car while he kept crying. His face was pink and wet and Eliot hated seeing any of his family crying. He hated seeing Abe crying the most and wished his mom would comfort her oldest son for a moment. Unfortunately, Eliot knew his father wouldn’t allow it.

Joseph took the two boys and clamped his hands around the back of their small necks. He started to yank them toward the spot Heather stood in beside Abe. When they got to Joseph’s desired location he crouched between them. Eliot could look at his big brother, covered in blood and bruises. He just stared at the grass next to Abe’s feet and numbed out the feeling of his father’s hand pinching the nape of his neck. He wished the ground would open up and swallow his father. Nothing he looked at would focus and he was okay with that.

“See what happens when you turn your back on the Lord? When you disrespect authority?” Joseph’s voice was nauseatingly tender, like he was giving his sons an important piece of life advice. Maybe he was. He patted their backs and stood back up to his full height. Eliot noticed the way Joseph refused to call Abe their brother like he usually did. “Take Abraham as an example, boys.”

Abe wasn’t allowed to come home after that.

Eliot spent that Sunday night in his bed. He refused to eat dinner or even leave his room. The look of fear on Abe’s face was burned into his eyelids when he closed them and he couldn’t un-hear the sound of his brother’s nose cracking. After Heather tucked Nate and him into bed and kissed their heads, Eliot stayed up and prayed. He prayed that his mom would stop crying. He prayed that his father would stop making his mom cry, or that the man wouldn’t wake up in the morning. He prayed that Abe would come back or that he would take Eliot with him to wherever he had to go. Eliot prayed that he could fall asleep and disappear for a while. Until he was eighteen, and then he could go find his brother and get away from Whiteland, Indiana forever.

Monday afternoons Joseph would drive to the next town over for feed and supplies. It was always Monday afternoons. He took Nate with him this time so neither of them were home. Ben was at a friend’s house for dinner.

Eliot was the only brother at the farmhouse with Heather. She was alternating between doing the laundry and making lunches for all her boys. Brown paper bag lunches that she doodled on for them. Eliot was doing math at the kitchen table because his teacher, Mr. Polman said he needed “extra enrichment” and wasn’t focusing in class.

Eliot didn’t know if he wanted paper bag lunches anymore. At least not with doodled hearts and smiles on them. All the other boys at school had Superman and Transformer lunch boxes. That’s what boys liked. Eliot remembered when Nate called him gay because Heather drew a butterfly on his lunch.

Eliot’s pencil snapped against the paper. Heather looked up from the slices of bread neatly spread with mayonnaise and put down the slices of offensively orange cheese before whiting her hands on her skirt. Eliot’s mom always wore skirts. She looked pretty in them.

“Baby, be careful. Let me go get you a new pencil--try to write a little softer, we don’t have many.” Heather tousled his short curls on her way out of the room. He just stared at the math. None of it made sense to him. He didn’t really remember doing any of it, but it was there and it was done. He couldn’t tell if it was right or not, but that’s what Mr. Polman was for.

When she came back, she gave him a dull, blue painted No. 2 pencil. It probably came out of the utility drawer in the office--that’s where they kept the extra pencils. This one was waxy and squeaked against the paper much to Eliot’s dismay. It kept him out of his thoughts at least.

The truth was: Eliot had been daydreaming about his brother coming back. Picking him up during lunch. They would run away and drive to Montana, where Eliot’s cousins lived. It was really pretty there and Abe always told him cowboys lived there and how if you drive to the top of the state, you could walk right into Canada. He’d been imagining what Canada looked like all day.

Maybe that’s why the knock on the front door of the farmhouse made Eliot jump out of his seat. Heather followed behind him as he went to answer it. She let him start doing that now that he was going into middle school.

Maybe God had answered Eliot’s prayers, because on the porch was Abe. His face was swollen and angry in some spots, and he looked about ready to jump out of his skin when the door opened. Eliot stared up at him for a moment before he threw himself to Abe.

“ _ Oh _ , Eli, be careful, buddy.” Abraham patted Eliot’s arm to signal for his release. Reluctantly, he unlatched his arms and took a step back. Heather and her eldest son shared a look and he looked away guiltily. Abe crouched down in front of Eliot and took his hand, looked at him past a swollen cheek and nose. “I need you to do something for me, okay?”

Eliot chewed his lip in thought before nodding slowly.

His brother sucked in a breath to keep the tears from coming, “I only have about thirty minutes, so I need you to go upstairs for me. There’s a bag in my closet and I need you to pack it with a change of clothes. Mama’s rules, remember?”

“Shirt, jeans, underwear, socks?”

“And a sweater, okay?”

Eliot nodded again.

“And I need  _ you _ -” Abe emphasized the word by poking his little brother in the chest. It tickled and Eliot had to bite back a small smile. “-to grab anything you think your brother shouldn’t live without, okay?”

Another nod.

“You’re cool, dude. You got this.” Abe smiled and then waved at him. “ _ Go. _ ”

Eliot turned around and pushed past his mom. He was given a mission. Abe needed his help. Maybe he would take Eliot with him if he did well enough. He stomped up the stairs and ran down the hall to his brother’s bedroom and immediately pulled the door to the closet open. It always stuck.

He packed a cloth bag full of clothing for Abe and then got started gathering other things. Eliot looked around knowing that time was running out before his father and brothers got home.

Well, he would need his piggy bank so he can buy things. Eliot put it in the bag along with some change he had in his own pocket. Next, he got down on his hands and knees to look under the bed.

Eliot knew Abe kept his copy of  _ Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone _ under his bed so Joseph wouldn’t find it. It was his brother’s favorite book. The hard cover was laminated because it  _ was _ a library book, but the corners were eaten up by years of wear and tear. Eliot nestled it in the side of the bag.

Abe really liked music. He said it helped him feel better. Eliot picked up the blue Walkman off of his brother’s side table, and the wire over-ear headphones attached. Eliot decided he needed more tapes to listen to as well so he started plucking his favorites off of the wire rack beside Abe’s desk.

When Eliot got back downstairs, his big brother was waiting out next to his truck. Heather followed Eliot out onto the porch and waited while her son delivered the bag and handful of other items like pictures and more books to Abe. The walk across the yard felt longer than usual, and suddenly Eliot felt a wave of grief as he handed the items to Abe.

Abraham set the items on one of the bucket seats in the back of the cab and then fingered through the selection. With a smile, he plucked a cassette case from the limited collection and squatted in front of his brother. Eliot had a bad feeling that he wouldn’t be going with his brother.

The older boy pressed the plastic of the case into Eliot’s hand with a sad smile. Eliot had to look down and see what it was. Abe’s voice sounded thick when he spoke, “This is the Boss’s first album, Eli. I need you to take good care of it okay? My favorite song on it is the second one on it, so if you ever miss me, you put that on. Got it?”

Eliot’s mouth dried up. He wasn’t going with Abraham. He couldn’t help the hot pinch in his nose but nodded anyway, knowing not to fight with his brother. Upon seeing the tears rolling down Eliot’s face, Abe pulled him into a hug. He was warm and comforting and Eliot was suddenly scared that he wouldn’t get to feel that warmth ever again. He didn’t know if he wanted to.

“Eli, it’s gonna be okay.” Abe murmured to him, rubbing his back.

They had to say goodbye, and they did. Abe gave his little brother a list of things to do before he left:  _ take care of your mama and kiss her on both cheeks every morning before school, take a dollar from Ben everytime he swears, never hate Nate--no matter how mean he gets, and don’t listen to dad. _ Eliot tried to agree. He was overwhelmed though. And Heather held him as he cried into her stomach.

He heard the gravel of the driveway crunch under the weight of Abe’s truck and refused to turn around to see his big brother wave goodbye before driving east. Eliot couldn’t tell if things  _ were _ going to be okay.


End file.
